


Remaining

by primreceded



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-21
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-27 04:43:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/974470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primreceded/pseuds/primreceded
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set directly after Whiskey Delta. This is just a little piece I started while I was still writing WD and rediscovered earlier today. Decided to finish it, because why not? I think it all might be leading up to a big ol' fight, idk. </p>
<p>Sam and Dean stop for the night at a hotel on their way to South Dakota.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remaining

The only room with a door is also the only room without a bed. Dean sighs, though more because the situation calls for some kind of response and not because he's in any way surprised by it. He drags the mattress back to their room while Sam hits up the vending machines for tonight's supper.

They'd swiped some sheets from their room in Savannah, and he makes their bed, military quick but all precision forgotten. There are more important things now than perfect corners, but at least it's a layer between them and whatever might be crawling on the Serta. 

Sam comes back, bags of chips and candy bars, drops a couple cans of soda onto the nicked wood table.

“Still cold.”

Dean salts the doors and windows, because even during the goddamn zombie apocalypse, they still have to worry about ghosts and demons. Sam's breathing heavy in the silence of the room as Dean works and he tries not to snap as it grates on his already thin nerves.

“ _What_?”

“We should have kept going.”

Dean finishes and sidesteps around his brother _stop fucking hovering Sam_ and sits at the table to eat, salt from the chips mixing with the grit on his hands.

“I can't keep going, Sam. And neither can you.”

They've been going non-stop since Georgia, trying to get to Bobby, and they're both exhausted, even if Sam is too stubborn to admit it. The back roads they took to avoid the living had become overcrowded with the dead, and putting them down has become tiresome. 

“Then we should have stayed in the car. Found some empty field somewhere and parked. We're sitting ducks here, man.”

“And lying beneath the stars in a freaking field _doesn't_ make us sitting ducks? C'mon, Sam, use your head here.”

“I have been! I feel like I'm the _only_ one using their head, Dean. What if one of those things breaks in?”

“We shoot it,” Dean replies coolly with a mouth full of chips.

“A horde?”

“We shoot them, too. Just like we have been.”

Sam clenches his jaw and Dean can tell the kid is gearing up for a second wind, and he just _can't_ right now. He's too tired to deal with Sam's bullshit and _that_ is exactly why they're not in the Impala. 

“I'm goddamn exhausted, Sam. And so are you. Our chances of survival in the car with the way we are now? Zilch. You know that.”

The fight doesn't leave Sam, it never does these days. But Dean can see the argument is over, at least for now, and he kicks the chair opposite his for Sam to sit. 

“It's just one night, I swear. We'll barricade the door and we'll sleep. Tomorrow we'll get back out there and find that field so you can pick your daisies, okay?”

Sam sits - reluctantly, but he sits - and Dean relaxes just a little. For long moments the only sound is Dean's obnoxious crunching.

“We don't have much longer to go, Sam,” Dean says. 

Sam grabs a bag of chips and doesn't respond. 

 

\--- 

Despite what he told Sam, and despite his very best efforts, Dean doesn't sleep. He lies very still so Sam doesn't get the satisfaction of “I told you so”, and listens to the groaning and snarling coming from outside. 

At some point, before the light fully breaks through the curtains, the bed next to Dean creaks and he hears Sam stomp into his sneakers and the door open. Dean tenses, because _Sam_ and _danger_ , but he gives his brother a few minutes before following along behind him. 

There are a couple of fresh corpses littering the cracked parking lot and Dean figures Sam laid them out on his way by. Silently, with a knife, and Dean has to hand it to his brother. Under normal circumstances Dean figures he would probably be creeped out with how good Sam is with a knife, but they're not normal and there's certainly nothing normal about the rotter at his feet. 

In the harsh light of day Dean can see just how far gone the hotel actually is. The earth is taking back the parking lot and he trips once over the raised concrete, gives the crack a one-fingered salute out of embarrassment. They really got lucky with the room that they found as half the hotel is caved in, while the other half looks like it was picked clean by scrappers. It's only been a couple of weeks, three at the most, and everything is already tumbling down. 

Sam is sitting at the edge of the parking lot, knees to his chest and a bloody knife held loosely in his hands. He's staring across the busy street, watching something by the river and it's only when Dean gets right behind him he can see it's a couple of kids. 

“Shit,” Dean says and Sam doesn't look up.

“They must've gotten caught outside when it happened,” Sam's a little sniffly but Dean chooses to ignore it as he squints across the street. 

There are three, silhouetted dark against the morning sky, and Dean wonders why they don't seem to want to move very far from the water. The fact that they're just standing there is kind of freaky. 

“I'll put'em down,” Dean says and Sam makes a disgusted noise.

“They're just kids, Dean.”

“No, they're not Sam. They used to be, but now they're just empty _things_ waiting to eat your face. We can't leave them there, they could _hurt someone_.” 

Dean can't believe he's actually having this conversation right now, but Sam's not getting the upper hand on this. This is what they _do_ , and Dean's not about to let the bad guy go just because of how old they used to be.

“Do what you want, Dean,” Sam says and stands. Dean watches him, irritated, as Sam heads back into the hotel room. There's a headache brewing behind Dean's eyes as he makes his way across the street.

It's surprisingly easy to take them out. They pay Dean little attention, even when he gets close enough to put the barrel of his gun against a temple. Up close, he figures they couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen, and yeah, it's a damn shame. There's a fishing pole lying broken on the ground a few feet away and he reckons that's what they were doing, maybe, when everything went to Hell.

After, Dean tells himself it was for the best. That just because they were passive with him doesn't mean they always would be, that they'd get hungry eventually. That it would have been a disservice to not only his fellow survivors but to the kids, who they used to be, if he had let them stay like that. Their spirits no longer restless. It'll help him sleep that night, maybe.

Sam's waiting for him in the car when he gets back, their gear piled in the backseat. 

“Jesus, Sam,” Dean starts but he doesn't finish. Just sighs. 

“You said we could leave in the morning,” Sam doesn't look at him, and Dean kind of wants to hit him a little. “Well it's morning, so let's go.”

Dean climbs behind the wheel and doesn't talk to Sam for the rest of the day.


End file.
